


I Wish for Constellations

by Kalcifer



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Marvel Cinematic Universe Fusion, Background Jacqui Green/Aria Joie, Fluff, Gen, Humor, but specifically the version from right after the avengers came out, where everyone lives in a tower together and banters all the time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:08:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22983790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalcifer/pseuds/Kalcifer
Summary: Orth's lived a sheltered life, which is the only explanation for why he thought having the entire Chime living in his tower was a good idea.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	I Wish for Constellations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoldandScarlett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldandScarlett/gifts).



> My friend was very rude and pointed out that I'd basically written the equivalent of those Avengers tower fics for the Chime, so naturally I doubled down and wrote this, which is longer and contains even less plot than the original fic. This is what being friends with me gets you.

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Cass said, grabbing a box of cereal. “Why is this place called the Kingdom Come?”

“Thank you!” Aria said immediately. “Don’t get me wrong, Orth, I appreciate you letting us stay with you and all. It’s just that getting an invitation to live in Kingdom Come without context was a _little_ alarming.”

Orth opened a cabinet so he wouldn’t have to face either of them. Someone in the tower was a huge fan of tea, apparently. He didn’t know what half of these were. “Well, I was young when I named it, you see…”

“It’s a reference to the _Seasons of Hieron_ anime,” AUDY announced.

Orth groaned.

There was a distinctive metal clank, the sound that usually proceeded an appearance from Mako. Sure enough, he dropped from the ceiling a moment later, hair in disarray. “Wait, isn’t that a pirate ship? And aren’t you like a kajillionaire? I bet you’ve never pirated anything in your life.”

“I could have named it after Sige’s boat, you know.” Orth realized his mistake a fraction of a second too late. He should have kept trying to figure out what “Iron Goddess of Mercy” was.

“That’s even worse!” Mako said with delight. “That just means you’re a hipster as well as a nerd.”

Aria looked totally lost at this point. Cass sighed. “We can watch it next movie night, if you like. Someone here was bound to suggest it eventually. We’re all a bunch of nerds.”

“Oh good?” Aria said. “You’re doing a great job of selling it so far.”

“And speak for yourself,” Mako said. “And for Orth, obviously, but some of us are very cool archers who do sick stunts on a daily basis.”

“Says the man who immediately got Orth’s _Hieron_ reference,” Cass said.

“Mako, would you like me to share your Netflix history?” AUDY asked. “I believe that would be the best way to determine the validity of Cass’ claims.”

Mako made a face of exaggerated horror. “Alexa would never betray me like this.”

“Alexa will harvest your data and sell it to anyone with spare cash,” Cass said, standing up to put their bowl in the sink. So Orth really had just been staring into this cabinet for the entire time it took Cass to eat cereal. He didn’t know if that said more about them or him. He closed it and grabbed a Poptart from where Aria had left them.

“But she wouldn’t call me out in front of my friends,” Mako said. “Friends I thought AUDY was included in until now, may I add.”

“I’ve been programmed to give my services a personal touch,” AUDY said.

“Orth, why did you make them so mean?” Mako asked.

Ah, so Orth had relaxed too soon. He should have known not to let his guard down once he was in Mako’s sights. “I wasn’t planning to, you know. I just turned them on to see how they were coming along, and it turned out they were already sentient, and at that point it seemed rude to try to change their personality.”

Mako nodded. “You know, that’s fair. Good call on that one.”

“Wait,” Cass said, their tone boding poorly for any chance to escape the conversation in the next hour. “Does that mean that they’re a rogue AI?”

“Are you saying we live in a tower that’s basically haunted?” Aria asked.

Mako’s eyes went wide. “So that’s why it’s the Kingdom Come! I take it back, that’s really good. Please tell me you have a Panther drone fleet or something to match.”

“I’d make a terrible Brandish,” AUDY said.

Aria set down her fork. “Okay, seriously, what are you all talking about?”

“You know what, forget movie night, this is an important part of your future education. We’re watching it now.” Mako turned to Orth with a smirk. “Here’s your chance to live up to the tower name and do some piracy for once in your life.”

“I actually own the entire series on Blu-ray,” and DVD, and limited edition Laserdisc set…

Mako rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I kind of assumed when you named an entire building after it, but I was setting you up to look cool for once.”

“Now Mako,” Aria said in her Precious Bell PSA voice. “There’s nothing ‘cool’ about crime.” She managed to say the word “cool” as if it were both a foreign concept and the word on her word-a-day calendar. Orth almost wanted to apologize, despite the fact that he hadn’t even been the one to suggest piracy.

Mako was made of sterner stuff, though, so he just laughed. “That is the worst, never stop doing it.”

“Of course,” Aria said, still in cultural icon mode. “Evil never rests, so neither will I.”

“God,” Cass said. “Can we please just watch this dumb show before Mako decides he needs to upstage her.”

“That’s a great idea,” Mako said in the most exaggeratedly fake Southern accent Orth had heard in his life, and he’d gone to charity fundraisers for rural schools. “We wouldn’t want to get too distracted from our goal here.”

Orth had only just sat down, but he stood up immediately, Poptart still in hand. “I’ll find the discs.” They all knew by now that Mako and Aria would escalate indefinitely, and that was without Jacqui appearing from nowhere to egg them on, as was inevitable whenever one of these conversations went on long enough. The only thing to do was to cut it off at the pass.

Besides, if he could get Aria invested in the show, maybe he’d have someone to talk about it with who wasn’t constantly making fun of his taste in television.

* * *

“So just to be clear,” Mako said over the comms. “This guy is calling himself Diego Rose, he’s wearing a pirate costume that looks like it came off the clearance rack of Party City, and he’s got some kind of energy beam?”

“Most people call those lasers, but yeah, you’ve got the rest of it down,” Jacqui responded. It was good to know that neither of the resident spies cared about things like “radio silence” or “not giving their position away to the enemy.”

“Okay, first off, we don’t actually know if he’s using polarized light, so I feel totally justified in calling it an energy beam,” Mako said. “But it’s good to know he didn’t put any effort into a coherent theme at all. Glad we got that settled.”

“Yeah, I was just thinking about how the worst part of someone breaking into a bank and taking a bunch of hostages was insufficient style,” Cass said, a little snippier than they’d intended. They’d agreed that it was best to send the stealthy (or supposedly stealthy, anyway) members in to scout it out before storming the place, but that didn’t make it easier to sit outside with no sense of what was going on.

Aria was in the same boat, but she managed to keep her voice light as she said, “Maybe he just likes pirates.”

“Then he could have put more effort into the costume. This guy’s giving pirates a bad rap.” Mako lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I mean, he’s no Brandish, right, Orth?”

“You’re going to have to drop that eventually,” Orth said without conviction.

“Not as long as the building’s still named after it, I won’t,” Mako said cheerfully.

“Anyway,” Jacqui continued, “maybe he doesn’t have the money for something better. He is robbing a bank, after all.”

“He’s apparently got a powerful enough laser to break into a bank vault, though,” Cass pointed out. “He has to be getting the parts from somewhere.”

“Maybe he stole them?” Aria suggested. “Once again, he’s robbing a bank, I don’t think he’s too concerned about legality.”

“Then he could at least steal a better costume,” Mako said. He sucked in a breath. “Okay, hold that thought, I think I see something.”

There were several minutes of silence, during which Cass sat very still and didn’t allow themself to think about what might be going on inside or how much they hated this. Then the door to the bank opened, and out stepped a man in an admittedly terrible pirate costume, Jacqui looming beside him. Mako followed, carrying a gun that looked like a prop from a cheesy 50s sci-fi movie.

Orth brought a hand to his face like he’d forgotten he was wearing a helmet and gone to pinch his nose. To his credit, he transitioned to resting his forehead in his hand in a way that was almost smooth. “Did we really just trust Mako with the highly destructive energy weapon?”

“Hey, I don’t know what you’re implying. I’m plenty responsible. Besides, the rest of you can blow things up with your minds or whatever, I think I’ve earned a cool energy beam.” He punctuated his point by gesturing with the gun in a distinctly irresponsible fashion.

Cass was about to comment on that fact when there was an explosion behind them. Diego looked up with a smirk. “Did you really think I’d come here without backup?”

Jacqui punched him in the head, knocking him out instantly. “Finally. That guy was a real pain. Now let’s go take out his equally unpleasant friends.”

“It sounds like they didn’t bother with hostages, at least,” Aria said, one hand at her earpiece where AUDY was presumably feeding her information. “So we’re free to go to town on them.”

“Ugh, finally,” Cass said. They stopped trying to hold down their anger and let it carry them away.

* * *

Aria just wanted to get a snack. And yes, she knew that going out into the common areas of the tower after ten pm or so was a risk, but normally that just meant finding Cass asking AUDY for weirdly specific plant facts or Jacqui and Orth debating fashion or something. She wasn’t expecting to find Mako curled up under the kitchen table at 2 in the morning.

Here was the thing: Mako liked hanging out in enclosed spaces, for reasons Aria would never understand. He was prone to appearing from the vents or random closets or boxes you’d assumed were just a symptom of his unwillingness to clean up. But normally, half his fun was in the hiding. He timed his entrances to maximize surprise and/or annoyance in the people around him.

So to see him sitting on the floor in plain sight was concerning, to put it mildly. Aria crouched down next to him. “Are you okay?”

Mako startled, narrowly avoiding hitting his head against the table. “Huh? Oh, yeah, totally, I’m fine.” His voice was creaky in a way that suggested he’d just been crying.

“Really,” Aria said. “Because it looks to me like you’re hiding under a table in the middle of the night.” She scooted closer to him, and was relieved when he didn’t shy away.

“Maybe I got tired of my usual hiding spots and decided it was time for a change,” he said without conviction. “I didn’t know I had to run all my decisions past you.”

“You don’t, but I distinctly remember you telling Orth yesterday that you were never going to get tired of crawling through the vents.” Aria tried to keep her tone light, as if this were just another argument over nothing where they’d all changed their stances five times in the last week.

Mako shrugged half-heartedly. “You can’t hold me to the things I say to get a reaction out of Orth.”

“What about the things you say to get me to go away?” Aria could tell she struck a nerve by the way Mako looked away. “Okay, look. You don’t actually have to tell me anything you don’t want to. You can just say that you’re upset and you don’t want to talk about it and I’ll leave it at that. But don’t act like everything’s fine just to keep me from worrying or something dumb like that. Please?”

Mako sighed, a much quieter sound than his usual exaggerated shows of annoyance. “Okay, but now it just feels like I’m making a big deal over nothing. I’m going to tell you what it is and you’re going to go ‘Really?’”

 _Maybe_ , Aria thought. Mako’s priorities were an enigma to her. She was also a good actress, though, so she made her best earnest face and said, “I promise I won’t.”

“Maybe not out loud, but you’re definitely going to think it,” Mako said, probably aiming for humor but landing closer to exhaustion. “It’s just… I mean, all the rest of you are these cool superhumans, right? Meanwhile I’m the guy who’s had way too much practice with a bow. And don’t get me wrong, I’m very good at my job and all, but when it comes down to it, I’m definitely the most replaceable person here. So it doesn’t make sense for me to make a big deal about these things, right? I don’t need to make myself a burden.”

Aria could feel a familiar righteous anger bubbling through her veins, and struggled to keep it in check. Mako definitely wouldn’t take it the right way right now. “You know what, you were right, that is stupid.”

He spread his hands. “I told you it would be. I mean, the chances that you’ll be able to find someone else who’s good with weapons and breaking into things and has no sense of self-preservation on short notice are pretty small –“

“Nope, still being stupid, stop that.” Aria closed her eyes and took a calming breath. “This has nothing to do with the Chime as superheroes or whatever. Before all that, you’re our friend, and we’re not about to kick you out just because you’re a human being with emotions.”

Mako made a choked sound. “Thanks, but I’m not sure you can make that call. This is still technically Orth’s tower.”

Aria snorted. “Like any of us actually listen to Orth. You can live in the vents and I’ll sneak you food if I have to.”

“If Orth tries to do something that stupid, I will lock him in his workshop and force him to watch videos of his own actions at your age until he relents,” AUDY declared, making Aria and Mako jump.

“Huh,” Mako said. “I mean, thanks, but I didn’t think you cared about us.”

“Good,” AUDY said.

Aria rolled her eyes. “Hey, if you’re going to listen in on our conversation anyway, you could at least make yourself useful and pull up a cookie recipe.”

Mako looked at her, confused.

“I need a snack, and you need a distraction,” Aria explained. “Making AUDY read recipe blogs out loud should help with both.”

“I don’t know why you’re already up to date on recipe blogs, and I don’t care, because you’re a genius.” Mako crawled out from under the table and began pulling drawers open. “Do you think Orth has any good cookie cutters?”

“3D printing a simple shape would take about as long as preparing cookie dough,” AUDY said.

“Okay, the helpfulness is a little weird, but I like the way you think. There have to be shark cookie cutter patterns on the internet, right?” Mako’s tone was still a little too enthused to be genuine, but Aria would take it over the tears of earlier.

“Check to see if they have any cool bell shapes,” she suggested.

“There’s no such thing as a cool bell, and even if there were, what happened to ‘this has nothing to do with the Chime as superheroes’?” Mako had grabbed a tablet from somewhere and was scrolling rapidly.

“Listen.” Aria hopped up onto the counter beside him and began offering her opinions on the best cookie cutter shapes.

* * *

“Oh, not again.”

Jacqui opened the door to the training grounds to see Aria shooting an annoyed look at the remains of a punching bag.

“Another threat to national safety foiled by Precious Bell,” Jacqui drawled.

Aria puffed out a breath. “Sure, mock me when I’m down, that’s fine.”

Jacqui shrugged. “Like you couldn’t just get Orth to build you a fancy new punching bag that won’t rip when you breathe on it funny.”

“I mean, I guess, but I just want something to punch. I don’t need it to float or tell me how to punch better or anything creepy like that.” Her eyes darted to the ceiling like she was expecting AUDY to take offense, but there was no response.

“Well,” Jacqui said, “I may have comments on your form, but I can promise I won’t float. Good luck actually hitting me, though.”

Aria’s eyes lit up. “Is that a challenge?”

“Obviously.” Jacqui was already headed to the sparring mat, tossing her tank top aside as she walked. Aria was close behind.

They stood facing each other for a moment, Aria trying to fight down an excited smile and Jacqui making no effort to hide her own slightly vicious one. Aria bounced on the balls of her feet once, and then, as if on an unspoken signal, they both surged into action.

Jacqui had studied the scraps of footage of Aria in the war, back when she’d first been recovered from the ice. She’d grown accustomed to being the contingency plan. The newsreels had done a good job of capturing her style, lithe and flexible and never quite where you’d expect her to be. What they hadn’t been up to conveying was the raw strength backing it up. Aria moved the way she did because it was what she was used to, not because she had to.

Jacqui could copy that style pretty easily. It wasn’t too different from her original training, back when they’d thought she’d be more effective if she looked dainty and unassuming, back when her arms had been made of flesh. These days, she’d found that the direct approach was just as effective, and a lot more fun. There was no point fighting Aria if she couldn’t enjoy herself in the process.

It was a similar line of logic that had her ask, “You learn to dance like that in Europe?”

“I learned to dance in a dance studio, actually.” Aria’s breathing was infuriatingly even but for the occasional grunts of effort as she swung at Jacqui or ducked out of the way of a blow. “Same place I first held a sword. Of course, the instructor realized pretty quick that giving me weapons was a bad idea.”

Jacqui caught Aria’s wrist, then had to let it go when Aria twisted her arm the other direction. “He ever try giving you a shield?”

“No, that was all Ibex.” Aria overreached and gave Jacqui a chance to kick her in the back, only narrowly catching Jacqui’s leg. “I think everyone else probably knew that I would have taken it as an excuse to keep running into danger.”

“And they weren’t wrong, clearly.” Jacqui did the best gesture at Aria’s whole deal she could manage without leaving herself open. “You know, I did ballet for a while when I was young. Then I decided it wasn’t my thing.”

Aria’s brow furrowed in a way that suggested she wasn’t fooled by Jacqui’s intentionally casual tone. It was sweet and all, but Jacqui wasn’t in the mood to talk about their mutual tragic backstories right now. She took advantage of Aria’s distraction to flip and pin her.

What she hadn’t considered was that this left Aria on the ground, hair escaping her ponytail to spread on the floor behind her like the backdrop to some idealized portrait. She was finally breathing hard, flushed with exertion. Jacqui was definitely staring. Aria wasn’t trying to move away, though, so she thought she was probably in the clear.

Too much time passed before Jacqui leaned back and offered Aria a hand. Aria took it and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. “Well,” she said breathlessly, “you’re definitely better than a weird robot punching bag.”

“I’m touched,” Jacqui said. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Does that mean you’re up for a rematch?”

Aria didn’t bother hiding her grin this time. “I’d love one.”

* * *

“Oh, come on,” Cass muttered, not looking up from their tablet.

Mako fought down a grin. He didn’t particularly enjoy Love Island, but he was a huge fan of how indignant Cass got whenever he “forced” them to watch it. He hadn’t yet pointed out that there was nothing keeping them from doing their work in another room. He was saving that one for just the right moment. He was going to say something about data collecting and how Cass’ science skills had clearly rubbed off on him, and it would be great. They’d probably do that thing where they got so indignant they stopped forming sentences.

But for now, he would just watch idiots do meaningless challenges on television for no reason, which was what he was doing when he heard a weird squeaking sound coming from the doorway. He looked over in time to see Orth attempting to pry the doors open. This was what he got for decorating his home like a Star Trek set. “You good?” Mako asked, this time not bothering to hide his amusement.

“Oh no, not at all.” Orth managed to push through the doorway. “We’re all going to be very bad if we don’t do something soon.”

Cass set down their tablet. “Did something happen?” they asked slowly. “Why didn’t you have AUDY open the doors for you?”

“About that.” Orth tugged at his clothing. “AUDY is currently quarantining my workshop so that we aren’t all brainwashed by an evil AI. I don’t think they can hold it back forever, though, so if any of you have ideas now would be the time.”

“Are you sure AUDY themself isn’t an evil AI?” Jacqui asked. Mako spun to find her leaning against the wall by the television. She definitely hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago. He wanted to call her out for showing off, but even he realized that would be a bit hypocritical given the number of used targets he’d “accidentally” left hanging up in the training grounds.

Orth made an apologetic sound. “AUDY’s never tried to enslave anyone in the name of productivity, so they’re better than this.”

“Really?” Cass gave him an unimpressed look. “What were you even trying to do?”

“I just wanted to make things around the tower more efficient!”

“And you thought the best way to do that was to make an artificial intelligence from scratch?” Mako asked.

“And then you just turned it on without bothering to run it past anyone else.” Cass shook their head. “You’d think the people in this tower would be all the proof you’d need of why peer review is important.”

“I don’t know, the experimental bullshit seems to worked out for Aria.” Jacqui had gotten out a knife and begun sharpening it. Whether it was for this mysterious evil robot or just for the aesthetic was unclear.

“Yes, yes, I may have made a mistake, can we focus on fixing it before it takes over the world?” Orth had progressed past fidgeting with his clothing and was running a hand through his hair, ruining any attempt at professionalism his newly-straightened outfit may have granted him.

Cass stood up. “All right. What can you tell us about this thing?”

Orth was about to explain when Aria walked in, pulling the doors open with an ease that made Orth’s earlier performance look even sadder in comparison. She was holding what looked like an RC car with a Bluetooth speaker strapped to the top. The speaker was emitting an annoying high-pitched whine. “Hey, uh, I found this wandering around Orth’s workshop,” Aria said. “Did you really build a robot that screams all the time?”

“Oh no,” Orth said. “Aria, put that down, it’s very dangerous.“

Aria looked down at the car. It was painted with the Chime logo, a thing they had for some reason. “Are you sure?”

“It may not look it, but if you listen to the sound for too long, it can get into your head and make you do things you wouldn’t otherwise do –“

“Oh, is that all?” Aria crushed the speaker with her bare hands. “Thanks for the warning.”

Orth gaped at her. The car had begun to rev its wheels, but it wasn’t having much luck escaping Aria’s grip.

“Well, I guess that settles that,” Jacqui said.

“I guess,” Cass said, still sounding concerned. “I’ll want to look at Orth’s code to see how he managed this one, but as long as there aren’t any more of these things wandering around, we should be good.”

“I… that’s the only spare speaker I had down there,” Orth said. “Assuming AUDY kept it out of the tower intercom and all the suits, I don’t think it can do anything else before we can shut it down.”

“Great!” Aria walked over to join Mako on the couch, car still struggling to get out from under her arm. “So what are we watching?”

“Okay, so the idea is that it’s a bunch of British people on this island trying to date each other, but they keep kicking people off and bringing new people in…” Mako explained the premise in meticulous detail, watching Cass grow more and more exasperated by the minute.

“I’m going to go check on this thing with Orth,” they announced at last. “You can watch your trashy shows without me.”

“We will,” Jacqui said, coming to sit beside Aria. You’d think a spy would have had more sense of subtlety.

Mako waved at Cass, then went back to explaining Love Island to Aria. Corrupting national icons was always a good use of his time.


End file.
